July 18, 2017

04:00:00 PM - 05:30:00 PM

Host:Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor

Location:640 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Room C228Washington, D.C. 20001

Join us for a luncheon discussion of a groundbreaking report from the American Federation of Teachers. The Big Squeeze reveals that workers stand to gain billions if pensions funds slash fees paid to Wall Street fund managers who invest in risky assets like hedge funds and private equity. The report quantifies the massive wealth transfer from workers to Wall Street that has endangered Americans' retirement security and crushed state budgets — and proposes steps that unions, pension funds, and legislators can take to reverse the trend.

June 29, 2017

Nearly a quarter century has passed since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was initially negotiated. Its proponents promised it would lead to job creation and increased living standards for workers in all three countries. Yet, some of the most adversely impacted communities are small farmers. Rural flight and increased food insecurities have resulted, as industrial agriculture has taken over production chains often leading to increased migration as local economies falter.

With the Administration's recent notice to Congress of its intent to renegotiate NAFTA, we see an opportunity. Renegotiating NAFTA offers the possibility to address food insecurity, remedy the incentive that drives rural dislocation, and fix other problems in the agriculture sector caused by NAFTA.

June 25, 2017

8 years after the military coup and just over one year after the assassination of indigenous leader Berta Caceres. Join the Honduras Solidarity Network on June 25th at 5pm Eastern Time for a webinar to mark the 8th anniversary of the 2009 coup in Honduras. Learn about the ongoing role of the US and Canada in perpetuating the coup and the deepening dictatorship. Let's talk about solidarity and action to stop US military aid, and support the Honduran people's fight against repression and the destruction of their land, territories and rights.

Speakers:

Karen Spring, Coordinator for the HSN in Honduras with an update from Honduras.

Dan Beeton of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) on current US policy and intervention in Honduras

Grahame Russell of Rights Action on how Canada and Canadian corporations are part of the problem in Honduras.

And a discussion on how to participate in the Action Campaign June 25-30 for the 8th anniversary of the June 28, 2009 coup and the campaign for justice for Berta Caceres.

May 21, 2017

Have you heard of TiSA? The Trade in Services Agreement or TiSA, is the largest multilateral trade deal ever negotiated, and currently includes 50 countries. TiSA would set the rules for "services" that the text defines so broadly as to encompass almost all areas of our lives. TiSA would apply to approximately 80 percent of the global economy, yet the massive, corporate-designed agreement has been negotiated completely behind closed doors, without public input. Without WikiLeaks, we would know very little.*

TiSA would inhibit regulation of the very banks that brought down the global economy, destroy online privacy and data protection, and would legally codify global privatization of the commons, including of access to clean water, public education, and quality health care. TiSA would entrench neoliberal dirty energy projects like fracking and tar sands development at the expense of renewables like solar and wind power.

Despite President Trump's proclaimed opposition to the TPP, and his checkered messaging around NAFTA, he has yet to say one word about TiSA, which has further-reaching implications. TiSA is now the biggest "free trade" deal we've never heard about, which is why Trade Justice Alliance is hosting two prestigious speakers on the topic:

Deborah James, Director of International Programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research

About Sanya Reid Smith

Sanya Reid Smith is a Legal Advisor and Senior Researcher at the Third World Network, an international coalition specializing in development issues and North-South affairs. Sanya travels the world in tireless advocacy for poor people in developing nations, on topics including access to medicines, womens' rights and environmental sustainability.

About Deborah James Deborah James is Director of International Programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. She has over fifteen years of expertise working on issues of trade and democratic global governance. At CEPR, her work focuses on the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and US policy towards Latin America. Prior to CEPR, she was the Director of the WTO Program of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, where she worked to inform civil society and governments worldwide about the potential impacts of the WTO's proposed Doha Round expansion.

She was also the Global Economy Director of Global Exchange, where she did similar work around the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. She has written numerous articles and makes regular media appearances in English and Spanish on these issues, and has appeared on CNN en EspaÃ±ol, Voice of America, CNN International, and the O'Reilly Factor, among other news outlets. She graduated cum laude in Psychology and Women's Studies from the University of California at San Diego, and holds a Masters in International Policy and Planning from the commerce George Washington University.

April 18, 2017

On Tax Day 2017, a panel of Baffler contributors will discuss various issues of concern in the Trump era. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, will explain how the phony policy dictates of austerity economics have demolished the foundations of middle-class prosperity. Contributing editor Barbara Ehrenreich will revisit the dismaying delusionsâ€”right, left, and in betweenâ€”that have made a Trump presidency possible. Online columnist Hussein Ibish will survey the challenges ahead in the Muslim-American community. And Baffler writer Rafia Zakaria will explore the many derangements of white ethno-nationalism in the Bannon age.

April 10, 2017

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's School of Labor and Employment Relations will host Dr. Eileen Appelbaum as featured speaker for the 2017 Milton Derber Lecture.

Appelbaum's talk, "Domestic Outsourcing, Rent Seeking, and Increasing Inequality," will address the increase in domestic outsourcing and the rise in networked forms of production as an important mechanism linking increasing rents and the rising earnings inequality among workers with similar skills. Production networks have become more prominent over the past three-and-a-half decades as firms have reorganized production processes to focus on maximizing shareholder value. This has multiplied the contractual relationships among producers and suppliers, conferring on them legal claims to the profit and rents produced by the network that reflect interfirm power relations. Firms with the greatest clout are able to claim the largest share of the rents and may share them with employees. The weakest organizations in a production network struggle to remain viable, and the wages of their workers take the largest hit.

The Annual Milton Derber Lecture was instituted in 1990 to honor Professor Emeritus Milton Derber and serve as a focal point for the intellectual enrichment for the school, its faculty and its students, as well as for the university community. Nationally known experts in a variety of employment relations subject areas are featured in this event, which is open to the public.

March 20, 2017

06:00:00 PM

Location:2237 Rayburn House Office BuildingWashington, D.C.

Congressman John Conyers Jr., Co-Chair of the Congressional Full Employment Caucus, invites you to a briefing with leading economic experts to discuss how progressive advocates for jobs and wages should approach the issue during the Trump administration. Experts will review the basics of full employment, how it is achieved, why it is important for wage growth, benefits, unionization rates, and society at large. They will review the Federal Reserve System's legal requirement to seek "maximum employment" as well as fiscal policies that can ensure full employment. Other topics will include: addressing the racial gap in unemployment rates and wages, proven strategies to increase our manufacturing sector, and much more. There will be a question and answer period following the discussion.

Panelists:

Heather Boushey, Executive Director of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and top economic advisor to Hillary Clinton

Hilary Shelton, Director, NAACP Washington Bureau

William Spriggs, Chief Economist to the AFL-CIO

Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

February 16, 2017

February 16, 2017 is the day millionaires stop paying into Social Security for the rest of the year. If the wealthy pay at the same rate as everyone else, we can expand benefits.

Join Social Security Works, Latinos for a Secure Retirement, the Center for American Progress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Alliance for Retired Americans, The Arc of the U.S., National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and Social Security champions from the Senate and House to demand millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share into Social Security.

January 16, 2017

There has been an enormous upward redistribution of income in the United States in the last four decades. In his most recent book, Dean Baker shows that this upward redistribution was not the result of globalization and the natural workings of the market. Rather, it was the result of conscious policies that were designed to put downward pressure on the wages of ordinary workers while protecting and enhancing the incomes of those at the top. Join us at Busboys & Poets for an informative talk by the author as Baker explains how rules on trade, patents, copyrights, corporate governance, and macroeconomic policy were rigged to make income flow upward.

As Ecuador takes over the presidency of the G77 + China group of 134 developing nations, its Foreign Affairs Minister has said that the country plans to make finance for development and tax justice the core of its presidency. The South American nation has put these issues on the agenda at the UN General Assembly, in the G77 + China group and at the Non-Aligned Movement summit. The day before Ecuador takes over the G77 at an official ceremony in New York, Ecuador's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Guillaume Long, will discuss tax avoidance, tax havens, and development at a special event in Washington DC. The Minister will also discuss the next steps of establishing a United Nations global tax body.

With contributions from:

Elise Bean, Former Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

November 17, 2016

The 45th president of the United States, regardless of who wins the election, is expected to pursue corporate tax reform in their first one hundred days. But this alone won't be enough to tackle the nation's biggest economic challenges including crumbling infrastructure, crippling student debt, stubbornly high income inequality and climate change.

On November 17, find out what a genuinely comprehensive tax reform and progressive fiscal policy could look like in the next White House from leading experts and policy-makers including Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and House Ways and Means Ranking Democratic leader, Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI).

Part 1: Free Trade 2.0?

Few areas more sharply define the difference between right and left in Latin America than trade policy. Where leftist governments fought fiercely over the last 15 years to slow and reverse years of unfavorable free trade agreements promoted by the U.S., the region's right seems just as committed to rekindling that agenda by signing on to massive deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership. Will they succeed? And what are the likely effects — for capital, for labor, for social movements, and for populations at large? This panel brings contributors from NACLA's Report on the Americas magazine fall issue together with activists on the front lines of social movement struggles to promote trade policy that is fair, and just.

The seminar is at 7:15 p.m. in a room that will be announced in the Faculty House lobby. Please look for a bulletin board posting. To reach Faculty House, enter the Columbia University campus via the gate on the east side of Broadway at 116th Street; go through campus and cross Amsterdam Avenue. Continue on West 116th past the Law School and turn left through the gate, turn right beyond Wein Hall on the right and go down the ramp to Faculty House.

Speakers:Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research; Liz Krueger, State Senator

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and an expert on the Trans Pacific Partnership and U.S.-Latin American relations. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is author of the book, Failed: What "Experts Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy.

He writes a regular column for The Hill, and a regular column on economic and policy issues that is distributed to over 550 newspapers by the Tribune Content Agency. His opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and almost every major U.S. newspaper, as well as in Brazil's largest newspaper, Fohla de SÃ£o Paulo. He appears as a weekly guest on "The Big Picture" with Thom Hartmann, and regularly on national and local television and radio programs. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

Senator Krueger, has represented much of Manhattan's East Side and East Midtown neighborhoods since her 2002 special election victory, when she captured the last Republican seat in Manhattan for Democrats. Krueger is a veteran member of the Senate's Democratic Conference and serves as ranking member on the Senate's Finance Committee, which has a large role in the state budget process and substantial jurisdiction over legislation moving through the Senate. She is a committed fighter for state government reform and a nationally recognized expert on the issues of poverty and homelessness. Prior to her election to the Senate, Sen. Krueger was the founding Director of the Food Bank for New York City and served as the longtime Associate Director of CFRC, a New York City anti-poverty direct service provider and advocacy organization. She holds a B.A. from Northwestern University in Social Policy and Human Development and a master's degree from the University of Chicago's Harris Graduate School of Public Policy.

*OPTIONAL DINNER: Members of the seminar will gather for an optional dinner in Faculty House at 6:00. The cost of the dinner is $30 per person and is payable by check only to Columbia University. In the memo line of the check, please write "Seminar 613 and 671 Dinner".

*PLEASE RSVP to Aggie Sun by email (ms4196[at]columbia.edu) by November 11 to attend the dinner and November 14 to attend the seminar.

Cross-border data flows are the life-blood of an integrated world economy. They support manufacturing and service supply chains and enable the flow of diverse and innovative goods and services to customers all over the world. But domestic policies must allow for these flows. In the last several years, we have seen increasing attempts to close down the flow of information across borders — through requirements for domestic location of computer facilities and explicit bans on the transfer of data into or out of countries. While domestic policy space must be large enough to permit legitimate regulations such as privacy and consumer protection, it should also ensure that these measures are no more restrictive than necessary to accomplish these purposes. The TPP was the first trade agreement to include binding provisions regarding these flows, but it has not yet been approved by any government. But there are additional avenues to discuss cross-border data flows. They include:

the Trade in Services Agreement being negotiated at the WTO

the WTO E-Commerce working group

bilateral discussions, discussions and resolutions at meetings of international economic leaders such as the G7 and the G20. Herein we focus on what's happening at the multilateral level at the WTO.

Join us for a discussion with a panel of experts and advocates on these avenues.

Speakers will include:

Sam Dupont, Director for Digital Trade, USTR

Michael Joseph Ferrantino, World Bank

Carl Schonander, Senior Director International Policy, SIIA

Deborah James, Director, International Programs, Center for Economic and Policy Research

November 9, 2016

The election is over. Racism, xenophobia, corporate greed, climate change, inequities and inequality — too name just a few challenges — are still with us.

So how do we maintain our collective momentum and what are our next steps to positively transform our nation after the ballots are counted?

Join our informed and dynamic panel and be a participating audience member as we discuss and interact with some of these issues and the movements struggling to transform them. We need to come together and immediately begin action steps for the next four years and beyond.